In the AfterLife
by The Heavens' Answer
Summary: After her resurrection, Shepard's feeling a little bit lost and a little bit cold. All her friends are gone, and her new body doesn't feel like home. She's not sure if her memories are real or just programming, or if she's even really alive. Thinking alcohol will fill some of the void, she ends up on Aria's sofa instead. And Aria helps her feel a little more human again.


**In the After[Life]**

_**sniperct, rompt:** Aria + femshep, sparring/dueling turns into something else? Angst that turns sexy, or vice versa?_

Set somewhere during Mass Effect 2, after meeting Liara but before Lair of the Shadowbroker, where Shepard ends up on Aria's couch and things progress from there.

Vanguard, Renegon, Femshep (hints of Liara x Femshep if you squint really **really** hard)

* * *

You never used to drink all that much. You didn't like the taste, or how it made you feel. How the bitterness blurred the world and the lines between right and wrong and you've seen enough and crossed enough of them, that it's hard enough to navigate even when you are lucid enough to see where they lie in the sand. But you figure being dead is a good and proper excuse. Better than any other you've heard across the years, and the galaxy, of that you're absolutely certain. (Spending two years as a corpse really gives you some perspective on living, or rather, less perspective, depending on how you want to look at it.)

It's not like you're not used to the world marching on in your absence. After all, you _are_ a soldier down to the bone. It's always an adjustment, coming back to civilization, to the ordinary, to the mundane, after months or years away on tours and peacekeeping and reported heroic feats of courage — only heroic because things always always sound better retold. The audience only gets to hear the good parts, all the glory and none of the sacrifice. They get to live vicariously through the triumph, absent the guilt and regret and doubts of the decisions that haunt you forever more, even when the faces fade and you can barely remember their names because there are just too many.

But something about being dead, like actually _dead_ dead (like, not breathing, crushed meat, bits of blood and bone and genetic material kind of dead - really you're surprised anyone managed to piece you together) — makes it different. It's not like you were away, out fighting, still making memories, had some feeling, some imprint of the passage of time, even if it resulted in nothing more than a scarred psyche, a shorter list of friends and more tears than you'd care to admit. Technically, you got all of the above, in death, minus the tears — you haven't exactly had time or enough feeling to shed those (and besides you're not even sure if they build something as useless as synthetic tear ducts).

It's just this black hole. A black hole of nothingness that, if you'd sober up long enough to admit it, is kind of giving you an existential crisis even if you've never believed in higher powers or an afterlife (minus the one you're currently sitting in). You feel better than ever, of course. And sobriety is relative now, thanks to your new machine of a liver. But it's just… blank. At least when you lost friends, you remember the goodbyes, you remembered how it all fell apart, because it happens (shit happens, you know that better than anyone and you've learned to roll with the punches) its just, you'd rather having even painful memories, than none at all.

And what you have now, from what you've seen, is just shiver cold, clinical, and blue (but really just cold). Sometimes you wonder if they programmed you with the wrong backup files. Alcohol, at least, still burns down your synthetic throat (you're not sure about the science behind that, but it's a nice touch) and maybe it's just a phantom fire kindling low in your gut, but it keeps you warm all the same.

* * *

You're not sure when you passed out (or if you just ran out of battery or whatever) but you wake up to a burning gaze, crossed arms and silent judgement. It almost makes you think of your mother and how when you were younger, you did everything you could to avoid being subject to this particular reaction, but then you promptly feel kind of disgusting because the half-digested booze is crawling up your throat and tastes terrible on your tongue and you've always found Aria pretty goddamn attractive (and that's just wrong to think of your mother in that way). You blame your programming, but it only makes you feel slightly less pathetic (and less like child, at best a newborn, because _really_).

Aria doesn't say anything, she just watches you, her lips pursed and her expression guarded. You like the power she exudes even when sitting still, the arrogance she wears so expertly like that white cropped leather jacket like a second skin, the vicious vicious mouth curled into a perpetual sneer. Untouchable. Unreachable. Beautiful. (But you'll never tell her that).

It's not quite derision that she's fixing upon you, there is some depth you cannot fathom, but you're not sure if it's cause you're hungover or reading things completely wrong. She gets up (you haven't seen her leave the couch, ever, since your resurrection and your first meeting, and you've made a number of visits since then) and without saying anything but still looking at you in that unreadable, inscrutable way that's driving you mad (like literally, you cannot compute) she walks over — all strut and swaying hips and power — and reaches out with a hand.

Which you promptly take without thinking because you've learned to respect (obey and fear) Aria, just a little, and you're pretty sure she mostly respected you (before you ended up on her sofa tonight). You're not sure where you're going — you never even knew Omega was this big, but then again, she owns this place and there had to be some back rooms and hidden corridors because she definitely lives here, somewhere.

The pulsing, perpetual music still vibrates through the wall, constant and almost humming, a bit like the not quite organic heartbeat you now possess. You feel your thoughts shuddering, jolting, in your mind, displaced by the sound and the feeling of her strong fingers somehow intertwined in your hand. And frankly, you're just barely holding on, but somehow this is more contact than you can remember having in a while, and if you could blush (can you? you're not sure but it feels like your molten scars are glowing a bit brighter) you would - _you are_ - because this feels strangely intimate and you're not really the person you used to be or a person at all, but you try not to think like that (too much).

She finally lets go of your hand and strides over to flick on some dim lights, leaving the area all ominous and dark and gloomy and somehow creating the perfect ambiance to your mood. The room is vast but hemmed in by metal containers and pumps and gears and whirring machinery. You stand there, like a statue, but internally you're swaying (still drunk? or just unbalanced? you're not sure, you're not sure of anything anymore) and she takes the spot in front of you, her eyes, filled with such certainty, such confidence meet with yours, still searching, and your breathing instinctively slows. Your trigger finger is curling reflexively.

You don't even need to speak, not really, you can see in the way she takes her stance, equally animalistic as it is refined grace and inappropriately sensual, it's a clearer message than anything, and you know this, remember this much, at least. Your boot grates over the serrated metal tiles as you slide back into your stance, hands half raised, humming with biotics as you pull it up from deep within you like a half-forgotten dream and you watch her do the same, the purple wisps sliding across her skin, a transient haze, tendrils of electric smoke, flickering, like her shadow on the wall.

And when she charges at you, all offense and precise blows, she's just as powerful, no _stronger_, than you ever anticipated. You almost taste fear at the back of your mouth as her strikes — knife-hand, knee, twist kick, spin kick, elbow come faster than you can think, but you're not supposed to think — spin, dodge, sidestep, forearm, duck. You're weaving, evading, you don't see opportunity through the wall of attack you're fending off. You pivot, half turning, neck snapping back as you catch her direct fist with your face, biotics flaring with a sub sonic boom as the energy absorbs the contact, but somehow managing to lean aside so the follow up punch just grazes your cheekbone, her knuckle travelling fast enough that sparks fly off the scrape.

"Come on, Shepard. You're better than this," she says to you, between tranquil breathes, perfectly measured and controlled and distinctly opposite to your erratic rhythm. The challenge calms you, reminds you, calls up a part of you that you didn't realize you missed.

You don't remember feeling this way, this overwhelmed and the almost fear is fresh, _refreshing_and you feel your body moving, reacting to counter hers (and curiously, its smooth automation somehow makes you feel more human, than less). The collision of sound that assaults your ears every time you counter her blows, the small explosions of biotics that sound off every time she connects with you, and you quickly fall into a rhythm. She's fast and powerful and experienced, but you were talented once, unparalleled, _once_ (maybe you can be again, even with this body you don't feel at home in).

She's stepping in and out, close and far, her movements fast enough to leave you lightheaded, but you start to see a pattern. It doesn't surprise you that Aria fights like a hurricane, all raw power and overwhelming force and moving like water when you press in for an attack. At once physical and unyielding, but intangible in defense, and you're buffeted by her blows though you learn quickly to shield yourself. You aren't fast enough to evade them completely (your body is heavier than you're used to), but you're learning, and her kicks and punches and biotic feints are missing their mark more often than they did a few minutes ago, you're learning to redirect the force of them, to let the power ripple off your form with a minor shift in stance, a sidestep, conservative as you learn her dance, and your bodies slide across one another, all hard contact and kinetic energy, weaving in and out and re-positioning to take the advantage.

It's getting hot, and you feel beads of sweat dripping from your brow, your clothes sticking to your skin. You feel her power waning as you gain a stronger foothold, and the triumph feels good, good enough that you feel like smiling, for once.

Aria her cocks her head like a cat, still judging, appraising, sizing you up, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "What?" she snaps, perfectly timed in between breaths, you're almost certain it's because she doesn't want you to realize she's starting to tire, but you felt it — felt it in the brief moments she pressed against you, felt her heart thundering in her chest, the flicker and twitch of her muscles even beneath her outfit, her slightly less regular exhales on your skin (it makes you feel more _alive_ than you can remember feeling).

"Need a break?" you ask, you don't mean for it to sound like such a taunt but it just happens to come out sounding like one anyway.

Her laughter is a short, staccato like burst, before she retorts, "Don't flatter yourself."

You're not sure what you intended, what you're thinking, but it's hot and stifling and you really need to feel the air (even in this sauna like room) on your skin and not this Cerberus uniform, all synthetic materials (like you) because it feels all wrong and you finally feel _right_ for once. It's not until you see her, watch her, _watching_ you, as you peel the shirt off your body and you can feel her gaze tracking across your magma like scars still knitting the broken pieces of material you together and the shadows and dips of toned muscle. It's not until you see her mouth part, just a little, and even at this distance her icy blue eyes darken into a molten, ocean blue, that it clicksinside you and you finally _feel_ a little bit like the Savior of the Galaxy again (but not in a vain way).

And just like the moments before, where you were both locked heatedly in battle, like the blows and the give and take and all mercurial action and reaction, time stops, just for a moment, and the relative silence is a vacuum. It's a measured breath, the kind of microscopic split second before a kill, the kind where your senses are on hyperdrive and you become more than just the sum of your parts, the fleeting taste of power in its purest form, of utter control, as your gazes catch, take point, _lock aim_.

In the sound of the muffled gasp that escapes her mouth and into yours, Aria seems to be surprised and mildly pleased that you're the one to pull the trigger. The biotic collision that rings in your ears is only second to that of the physical tremor that it sends, and you feel a river of shivers trickling down your spine from the aftershocks, magnified by her tongue grazing across_that_ one spot on the roof of your mouth.

It's a different kind of duel, a different kind of fight. It's all raw power and physical and so different, very different from the slow and love you faintly (only faintly) recall. She's all a blur again, all renewed and second wind. Razor sharp motion and liquid quick movements as she sheds her jacket and you're burning up inside, all the way down to your fingers as they melt through the black of the leftover leather of her outfit. Your fingers track over her taut muscles, the dark, burning cool hue, honed and hardened by centuries of fighting and struggle. You can feel the rage and sorrow and passage of time pulsing beneath your fingertips, inside your head and you're not sure you're supposed to see, but she doesn't seem to care as she pulls you close, aggressive and demanding and mercenary. So close that your bodies are pressed flush tight,_still_ kinetic energy, biotics flaring and crackling around you both, skin to skin _sweat_ and —

— heat and _not cold_ (it feels glorious) and you finally, _finally,_ feel a little less dead and a little more human again.


End file.
